20 People Not Giving a Damn About the Red Carpet at Cannes

My favourite kind of people are one the ones who don’t give a damn. So while the rest of the media fusses over the red carpet posers at the Cannes film festival, getting their seasonal fix of celebrity circusry, let’s take a look back at the ones who were just in it for the booze, the beach, and the…

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Exotic Dancing on the Colonial Bandwagon

When I first saw a black and white photograph of Ruth St. Denis, I was instantly seduced by her, just as many audiences of the early 20th century were too. Who was this female chameleon from another era dressed as an Egyptian Goddess, a Hindu deity, a gypsy princess, a geisha or even as an Indian peacock? Ruth St. Denis in the…

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Ode to the Monobloc Chair

One of the ultimate icons of modernity and mass production must be the famously infamous wobbly plastic monobloc chair. Found across the globe, from homes to hospitals, gardens to grasslands, base camp Himalayas to frosty Antarctica, this migratory masterpiece of furniture has followed humanity to the far corners of the earth like a faithful hound.…

Marge Simpson, the Style Icon

With that towering head of blue hair, we tend to forget that Marge Simpson has a killer body – for a bright yellow cartoon character, that is. So what better way to show off those famous Simpson curves than have her recreate some of the most memorable moments in fashion history? Italian illustrator, AleXsandro Palombo,…

A Photographer’s Forgotten Muse on the French Riviera

There was definitely something about Renée. When the legendary French photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue met her while strolling the streets of Paris in 1930, he fell in love instantly. Tall, chic and hiding coquettishly under a wide elegant hat, he nicknamed her the ‘parasol’. Together they embarked on what Lartigue remembers as an “eternal vacation”, a dreamlike two-year holiday in the…

The Real Jessica Rabbit

What I remember most about Jessica Rabbit is how she was always wearing that provocative red dress, cut oh so inappropriately low at the back, even just to run around town. Meet the real-life Jessica Rabbit, Miss Vikki Dougan, the 1950s ‘It girl’ who inspired the iconic cartoon sex bomb… Photographs by Ralph Crane for…

6 Startling Things I Didn’t Know about Bettie Page

Last night, I watched Bettie Page Reveals All, a 2012 documentary about her life history, with much of it narrated by Ms. Page herself and that wonderfully thick Southern accent of hers. Now here is the part where I admit that I ‘ve never really paid much attention to Bettie Page as a cultural icon before; always just putting her in that category…

Cinema’s First Sex Symbol was also America’s First Goth

From Mae West to Eva Green, the cinema archetype of the ‘femme fatale’ has fascinated and frightened audiences since Hollywood’s golden age. But nearly a century before Sharon Stone bore all as the deadly seductress Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct, silent-film actress Theda Bara, the silver screen’s very first sex symbol, hypnotized filmgoers with her…

Sophia vs Jayne: The OTHER Photos Behind That Sideways Glare

I had always thought Sophia’s disapproving look in this iconic photograph taken by Delmar Watson was a perfectly captured moment of female jealousy. Mansfield to me was the carefree blonde and Loren, the feisty brunette. But of course, most of us have only seen this moment from one angle. There were other photographs taken that night…

How Bugs Bunny Became a Queer Icon

Celebrities from Judy Garland to Madonna to Lady Gaga have been granted the title “gay icon,” but there’s one often-forgotten figure who deserves a spot on this list: Bugs Bunny. The Warner Bros. Cartoon character not only experimented with gender presentation but also married a man in at least three cartoons, in the 1950s. With…